Taipei has been ranked as the most vulnerable city to a wider combination of risks. Although the Special Education Law addresses the consideration of disaster preparedness for students with disabilities enrolling in Special Education Schools, more attention needs to be given to the far larger number of students with disabilities enrolling in normal schools. These schools need to consider the care for students with different types and severe degrees of disabilities. The aim of the research is to investigate challenges of earthquake preparation and response for students with different severe degrees of disabilities who enrol in the special education classes in general primary schools. The objectives of the research include the following: (1) investigating the challenges and requirements for support of students with different severe degrees of disabilities; (2) examining the need and support for students with different degrees of disabilities during the earthquake response process; and (3) exploring the best practice in the curriculum building for students with different severity of disabilities. The purposive sampling was used to select four primary schools in Taipei as participant groups in the research. The research team used semi-structured interviews to interview eight participants: one special education class teacher and one administrator of each school were invited. Findings include the following: (1) ensuring the appropriate design of physical environment for earthquake response in schools, including rapid response, evacuation, and assembly points for students with different severe degrees of disabilities; (2) proposing suitable staff to student ratio to be planned for the response phase; (3) identifying the appropriate individualised curriculum and learning objectives to suit students with different severe degrees of disabilities.
The relationship between Taiwan’s groundwater resources recharge strategy and flood disasters is significant. The adaptation strategies of traditional urbanization areas simulate the spatial distribution of permeable pavements under different rainfall intensities that affect surface runoff and infiltration. Since there are many parameters of the Stormwater Management Model set in different low-impact development modules, this study refers to transform the inundation to groundwater recharge. In this study, we simulated the spatial distribution multi-advantages of the JW ecological technology under short-duration intense rainfall events. The results show that the application of JW ecological technology can effectively increase groundwater resources by 64.1% through infiltration and reduce economic losses by about NTD 1.25 million under the rainfall event of 112 mm/1 h. The infiltration replenishment amount was about 61%, which could reduce the economic loss of NTD 4.4 million under the rainfall event of 350 mm/6 h. Thus, applying JW ecological technology in a highly developed urbanization area can effectively reduce surface runoff and economic losses. At the same time, the issue of water resources was adapted by the groundwater recharge.
Predicting the effects of changes in dissolved input concentration on the variability of discharge concentration at the outlet of the catchment is essential to improve our ability to address the problem of surface water quality. The goal of this study is therefore dedicated to the stochastic quantification of temporal variability of concentration fields in outflow from a catchment system that exhibits linearity and time invariance. A convolution integral is used to determine the output of a linear time-invariant system from knowledge of the input and the transfer function. This work considers that the nonstationary input concentration time series of an inert solute to the catchment system can be characterized completely by the Langevin equation. The closed-form expressions for the variances of inflow and outflow concentrations at the catchment scale are derived using the Fourier–Stieltjes representation approach. The variance is viewed as an index of temporal variability. The closed-form expressions therefore allow to evaluate the impacts of the controlling parameters on the temporal variability of outflow concentration.
Under the influences of natural disasters, disabled people are often the majority of sufferers when a serious disaster happens. Third UN World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction (3WCDRR) calls for agencies of the United Nations system, academia, the private sector, civil society, and people with disabilities to integrate the issue of the physically and mentally disabled into the new global framework for disaster reduction. Taiwan is one of the regions in the world where earthquakes occur very frequently. According to the statistics of the Taiwan Central Weather Bureau, an average of 23,000 earthquakes occurs in Taiwan each year, including about 1,000 sensational earthquakes. Earthquake prevention is therefore the essential task for campus disaster prevention and rescue programs. The school should recognize different evacuation abilities for students in special education classes, and know their special needs in earthquake disaster drills and emergency response ability.In this study, four special education classes in elementary schools were selected as examples to understand the current situation in the engagement with earthquake drills by way of interviews and questionnaires. The evacuation abilities of students in special classes are classified into four categories based on the issues of physical environment, manpower arrangement, and both students’ and teachers’ educations in earthquake prevention. On the basis of the results, the conclusions regarding to those three issues can be drawn as follows. For the first issue concerning the physical environment, the teaching space for special education classes should consider the students’ evacuation abilities. Second, both internal and external support manpower should understand the students' evacuation capabilities and give different assistance based on their abilities. Last, the education goals in earthquake disaster prevention for students in different categories should be different. The earthquake drills should be well arranged in the aspects of time, place, equipment, and manpower assistance. It is important to note that special education teachers and assistants should have good knowledge in earthquake disaster prevention, understand the appropriate response to earthquake disaster, and strive to ensure the safety of students and themselves in the evacuation process.